RAF (Rui Ferreira)

RAF is the working name of Rui Alexandre Ferreira, born in Lisbon and one of the veteran figures of Portuguese graffiti. Trained at the Escola Artística António Arroio, he came up through airbrush work, which he also applies to vehicles and helmets, and that background shows in the smooth gradients and volume effects of his walls. His repertoire is biomechanical: chrome tubular creatures with a single large eyeball, outlined in black against flat, saturated backgrounds. He painted the Talude, 2,800 m² on a retaining slope in Alta de Lisboa billed as the largest single-artist urban artwork in Europe, and the installation "Sinapse" for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.